During his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted” (Mt. 5:4). This is one of the statements of Jesus as contained in the “Beatitudes.” “… a beatitude is an exclamation of congratulations that recognizes an existing  state of happiness, beginning with the Hebr noun asre or the Grk adj. makarios. Here, the gospel begins with a cry of joy, based on the nearness of the kingdom of God. The original beatitudes about the ‘poor,’ the ‘mourners,’ and the ‘hungry’ express Jesus’ mission to the needy in Israel and the dawn of a new era of salvation history. All three refer to the same people. The poor…are happy not because they are morally better than others but because of God’s special care for them. God was conceived of as an Oriental King, and a king’s duty was to protect the weak.

The poor are the needy ones of Israel, who prefer the divine service to financial gain.  Their poverty is real and economic, but with a spiritual dimension.  In St. Matthew’s gospel, the addition of “in spirit” changes the emphasis from socio-economic to personal-moral; that is, humility, detachment from wealth, voluntary poverty. In the Bible, economic poverty is an evil to be corrected (see Deut. 5:1), and wealth is not an evil in itself; in fact, it is a necessity for the well-being of the kingdom, but one should be careful, because it can bring about the tendency to neglect God and the poor.

The beatitudes promise happiness to those who carry out their recommendations. This type of happiness should not be confused with contentment.  In other words, “the good” is not to be identified with “the pleasant”. Indeed, the Greek word “Eudaemonia” which means “Pleasure” is not synonymous with “Beatitudo”—“blessing or happiness”. While contentment is the result of mere sense gratification and material possession, the happiness promised by the beatitudes is the joy and satisfaction that come from true human fulfillment. True happiness is the outcome of the kingdom of heaven. Being comforted, inheriting the promised land, eating one’s fill at the messianic banquet, seeing God face to face, or becoming his children, are all ways of speaking about the kingdom. The kingdom is the one basic promise of the beatitudes.

The kingdom does not refer absolutely to the “hereafter,” but stands for the definitive and total liberation of mankind and the universe from oppression. This begins in this earthly existence, but will reach its fullness in the world to come. The fulfilment promised by the kingdom is not merely a “spiritual” fulfilment, since in Scriptures spiritual and material are not opposed to each other but are complementary aspects of human existence. The prophets had spoken of a world of peace, prosperity, freedom and justice in which people would live as God’s children. Jesus proclaims that what was promised in the Old Testament has begun to be fulfilled in him. Thus, whenever we change our ways in positive response to his proclamation of salvation we enter into a process of personal and societal liberation, and thus we are transformed. The Revelation of St. John tells us that this transformation has already started, but will reach its ultimate fulfilment at the end time (see Rev. 21:1-5). Consequently, the beatitudes offer us reassurance in the present and hope for the future.

In the first set of beatitudes, that is, Matt. 5:3-6, the kingdom of heaven is promised to the poor in spirit, that is, to those who place their trust in God alone; to those who mourn, that is, those who suffer because the kingdom has not yet come. The kingdom is for those who are meek, that is, non-aggressive in their disposition; and for those who hunger for justice, that is, for the justice that God will establish. These four beatitudes fall into two pairs, for ‘the poor in spirit’ are the same as the ‘meek’. Both terms represent the Hebrew word ‘anawim’ which is translated in the Greek Bible as ‘poor’ in Isaiah 61:1 and as ‘meek’ in Ps. 37:11; and those who mourn are those who long for the kingdom, and so hunger after justice.  In consequence, we have the two basic dispositions towards God required by the beatitudes: that of total dependence on God and of longing for the salvation God gives.

By Rev. Fr. Mark Ajiga